Gallup Report: Great Jobs, Great Lives

Measuring the Value of a Pitt Degree

The University of Pittsburgh commissioned Gallup, Inc. to survey recent alumni about their experiences as Pitt undergraduates and in the workplace. In the second report, the perceptions of Pitt alumni are compared with those of recent alumni from U.S. members of the Association of American Universities.

Measuring the Value of a Pitt Degree

Pitt selected Gallup because the Gallup-Purdue Index it has developed provides insights into the relationship between the college experience and long-term outcomes of college graduates.

Measuring the Value of a Pitt Degree

The Gallup-Purdue index survey is uniquely positioned to evaluate progress on the following goal in Pitt's strategic plan: "[To prepare] students to lead lives of impact through a supportive environment, focused on a holistic and individualized approach to learning inside and outside the classroom."

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Pitt-Gallup Report Findings

The mean personal income for recent Pitt graduates is $65,325, while their AAU counterparts earn on average $55,771.

83% of Pitt recent alumni work fulltime for an employer or for themselves, higher than the AAU average of 75%.

Recent Pitt graduates match or surpass their AAU counterparts in the likelihood to thrive in all five elements of well-being measured by Gallup.

41% of Pitt alumni (compared with 35% of AAU grads) strongly agree that their jobs/internships allowed them to apply what they learned in the classroom.

Pitt-Gallup Reports

The Year 2 study interviewed 4,196 adults who received degrees from the University's Pittsburgh campus between 2005 and 2015. In this report, the experiences of Pitt alumni are compared with those of graduates of the leading 60 public and private research-intensive schools that comprise the U.S. members of the Association of American Universities. Read the full report (PDF).

The Year 1 study interviewed 12,444 adults who received degrees from Pitt between 1950 and 2014. Read the full report (PDF).

All statistics included on this Web page are based on the Year 2 study of recent Pitt alumni.

Emotionally Attached Alumni

More than one in four Pitt alumni (28%) are emotionally attached to their alma mater, on par with recent graduates from AAU universities.